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I have been awarded a Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDA) Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) scholarship to explore the changing nature of the criminal justice system during the 1970s and onwards from the unique perspective of Crown Court clerks.

This project has been jointly initiated by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSEs) Legal Biography Project (LBP), co-directed by Professor Linda Mulcahy and Professor Michael Lobban, and National Life Stories (NLS) based at the British Library, curated by Dr Rob Perks.

Though Crown Court clerks play a pivotal role in regional trials of the most serious criminal offences such as murder, rape and burglary, little has been written about them to date. I will conduct in-depth life story interviews with former and serving Crown Court clerks to gain insight into, and deepen our understanding of, the lived world of the legal system, shifts in local legal cultures, and changes in the way that regional justice has been conceived of and experienced. The collection of life story interviews of Crown Court clerks will form an archive which will become a publicly accessible resource at the British Library.

For further information about the Legal Biography Project at the London School of Economics and Political Science click here. For further information about National Life Stories at the British Library click here.